Els van Meijel

26 Chapter 2 | Evaluation of the STEPP written information about the study and obtained informed consent. Inclusion was possible only after written informed consent. According to Dutch law, for a child 8-12 years, the parents decide; 12-16 years, parent and child both have to give consent; 16 years and older, the child decides and can give consent autonomously. The inclusion period was between September 2008 and January 2011. Screening for risk of PTSD was performed within one week of the accident. The STEPP was developed for use in the acute care setting and for assessment by trained nurses. However, this design was not compatible with the routine procedures of the Emergency Departments where we performed the research. For this reason, and to be able to include children who were discharged immediately after themedical screening, assessment was performed by the two researchers. After a general introduction it took about 5 minutes to administer the STEPP questionnaire. To determine intra-rater reliability, the STEPP was assessed twice in a sample of 20 children and 19 parents. When designing the study, we decided to re-administer the STEPP in the second year of the inclusion period to the first 20 children who were discharged. The second assessment was by telephone, within two days after the first assessment. Threemonths after the accident, PTSD was assessed in an interview conducted at the department of child and adolescent psychiatry in one of the two hospitals. Two different clinically trained psychologists interviewed the child and parent separately. All interviews were audiotaped. Self-report questionnaires were usually completed at home, and in a few cases during the consultation. To evaluate injury and trauma-related characteristics of the sample, data on duration of hospital stay, trauma type and injury severity were obtained from the trauma registry and the medical records. Information on heart rate upon arrival at the Emergency Department and the type of injury were required to complete the STEPP screening score; this information was obtained from the medical records after finishing the last assessments.